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January 31:
Trump's 'Buy American' trade talk a relic of the 1950s ... U.S. President Donald
Trump’s aggressively protectionist “Buy American” strategy would be a sure-fire
plan to revive his country’s long-suffering manufacturing sector, if this were
the 1950s, according to one international trade expert.
Mark Warner, principal of MAAW Law, says Trump is facing an uphill battle if he
expects to repatriate a significant number of jobs and keep prices at a level
consumers are willing to pay.
March 6: American Plastic Toys is a
manufacturing anomaly.
Nearly 90% of all toys sold in America are made in China. But for the last 55
years, American Plastic Toys has been making toys in Walled Lake, Michigan, a
bucolic lakeside city 32 miles northwest of Detroit.
April 18: Trump’s new “Buy American” executive order will just make infrastructure
more expensive
Currently, most contracts only require 50 percent of the product’s value to come
from American components. The 2009 stimulus bill had a “buy American”
requirement, and
projects that get grants from the federal Transportation Department also
have to agree to use all-American materials.
April 20: Trump faced a lawsuit in the 1980s that accused him and
business partners of withholding wages from undocumented Polish immigrants and
union workers hired by a contracting company called Kaszycki & Sons to demolish
the building that would make room for Trump Tower. Trump testified he did not
know the workers were undocumented and blamed the contractor for hiring them.
April 20: The Emptiness of Trump’s “Buy
American” Executive Order
When Donald Trump unveiled his latest executive order, titled “Buy
American and Hire American,” he made only the barest effort to conceal the
fact that the announcement was nearly entirely one of theatrics and not of
substance. He held his talk in Kenosha, Wisconsin, at Snap-on Tools, a firm
that buys Chinese
and hires Chinese, Argentinian, Brazilian, and Swedish. Seventy per cent of
Snap-on’s sales are in the U.S., but many of its plants are in other countries.
There is nothing wrong with Snap-on putting its factories overseas, it just
makes it an odd place to hold a Buy American announcement. It’s reminiscent of
President Trump’s celebration of jobs at a Boeing plant while the company was laying
offworkers.
https://www.newyorker.com/business/adam-davidson/the-emptiness-of-trumps-buy-american-executive-order
April 21: In ‘Buy American’ Push, Trump Is
Starting in a Hole ... Federal contracts to foreign firms have surged, and
president has limited power to buck the trend
Donald Trump's effort to force
the federal government to “Buy American” will be a challenge as
foreign-owned companies already hauled in more money from federal contracts in
the past three months than in any corresponding period in a decade.
May 9: Does Trump Hotel in DC 'buy
American'? ... President Donald Trump wants the federal government to “buy
American.” But does his DC hotel follow that directive? The WUSA 9 Special
Assignment Unit discovered that while The Trump International Hotel on
Pennsylvania Avenue is draped in old glory, it is also wrapped in
contradictions.
The four-story American flag in the lobby towers over Swarovski chandeliers made
in Austria.
Lamps lining the hallway are from China. Small decorative boxes on the coffee
tables marked with stickers that read “Made in India.”
There were phones from Malaysia. A TV from South Korea. A tray from the UK.
June 9: Donald Trump often portrays himself
as a savior of the working class who will "protect your job." But a USA TODAY
NETWORK analysis found he has been involved in more than 3,500 lawsuits over the
past three decades — and a large number of those involve ordinary Americans,
like the Friels, who say Trump or his companies have refused to pay them.
At least 60 lawsuits, along with hundreds of liens, judgments, and other
government filings reviewed by the USA TODAY NETWORK, document people who have
accused Trump and his businesses of failing to pay them for their work. Among
them: a dishwasher in Florida. A glass company in New Jersey. A carpet company.
A plumber. Painters. Forty-eight waiters. Dozens of bartenders and other hourly
workers at his resorts and clubs, coast to coast. Real estate brokers who sold
his properties. And, ironically, several law firms that once represented him in
these suits and others.
August 4:Toyota and Mazda have announced
plans to build a $1.6 billion manufacturing plant in the United States that will
create as many as 4,000 jobs.
The Japanese automakers said in a statement Friday that the
facility would be operational by 2021, but did not specify where it would be
built.
The move is likely to be seen as a
win for President Trump, who
attacked Toyota earlier this year over its plans to build a new factory in
Guanajuato, Mexico. He threatened to slap a "big border tax" on Toyota cars if
the plant isn't built in the U.S.
August 5: The US Air Force announced Friday
that it has finalized a deal to purchase two already-built aircraft from Boeing
to serve as the next generation of Air Force One, flying future presidents
around the world for decades to come.
August 7: Foxconn Factories Highlight Complexity of 'Buy American,
Hire American' ... The Trump administration is threading the needle with
protectionist rhetoric while courting international investors.
Rumors surfaced over the weekend that
Foxconn – the Taiwanese company Apple contracts with to help assemble its
iPhones – is planning a second multibillion-dollar factory in the U.S., just
weeks after it said a separate facility is on the way in Wisconsin.
August 15: If Trump pushes 'buy American' in
NAFTA talks, he may get more than he bargained for ... NAFTA prohibits
preferential treatment for American companies when they bid on U.S. government
contracts, with a similar restriction on Mexico and Canada when dealing with
their own government procurement.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-nafta-buy-american-20170811-story.html
September 29: Trump now calls for Americans
to “buy American, hire American.” But this is misleading. Trump has a long
history of outsourcing a variety of his own products. The Fact Checker has
counted a total of 12 countries where Trump products were manufactured (China,
the Netherlands, Mexico, India, Turkey, Slovenia, Honduras, Germany, Bangladesh,
Indonesia, Vietnam and South Korea).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-claims-database/?tid=a_inl&utm_term=.c4a883ef01f0
October 18: US allies air concerns about
Trump's 'Buy American' order ... Israel, Hong Kong and Taiwan joined a number of
U.S. allies at the
World Trade Organization on Wednesday to express concerns over a
Trump administration executive order that calls on U.S. authorities to
"maximize" use of American-made goods, products and materials in government
procurement.
The 10 WTO members, also including the
European Union, Canada and Japan, also urged Washington to continue honoring
the trade body's "Government Procurement Agreement" that binds the United States
and 45 other countries — mostly EU members — to open government procurement
markets to foreign competition and make them more transparent.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sns-bc-eu--wto-united-states-20171018-story.html
November 5: Trump, Democrats vie with McCain
on whether Pentagon should ‘Buy American’ ... Six months after President Trump
ordered the Pentagon to prioritize American-made products in its vast supply
chain, powerful members of his own party are pushing in the opposite direction.
In a move that effectively aligns the White House with Senate Democrats, the
Senate Armed Services Committee led by John McCain (R-Ariz.) has proposed
language in the 2018 defense spending bill that would end long-held domestic
sourcing protections, which require the Defense Department to rely on
American-made suppliers for certain products deemed critical to national
security.
January 8: The Trump administration will
unveil a new “Buy American” plan as early as February that uses U.S. diplomats
to help promote billions of dollars worth of weapons deals, Reuters
reported Monday.
February 12: Trump’s Silence on ‘Buy
America’ for Infrastructure Annoys Manufacturers
Donald Trump’s
proposal to upgrade U.S. infrastructure was met with a collective groan from
American manufacturers who complained that the president ignored his “Buy
America” promises.
The Alliance for American Manufacturing, a Washington-based nonprofit
partnership of producers and the United Steelworkers union, said the White
House’s infrastructure plan failed to give stipulations for domestic
manufacturers and workers to get the first shot at government contracts. In
recent months, the group has urged the president to follow through on
promises to protect American jobs against steel imports.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-12/trump-mum-on-buy-america-for-infrastructure-irks-manufacturers
March 2: Trump’s ‘Buy America' rules halt
NY-NJ truck replacement program ... A fund that offers $25,000 to Port of New
York and New Jersey truckers to replace older, polluting trucks with newer
vehicles has run out of money because new funding has been delayed by a Trump
administration requirement that the replacements contain only iron and steel
made in the United States.
The
Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said Thursday that existing funds
in the Truck Replacement Program have been exhausted, and although the federal
government in the past allocated additional money to continue the program, those
funds will not be paid unless the authority can obtain a waiver from the 'Buy
America' requirement. The truck replacement program, like those at other ports,
seeks to reduce pollution in and around the port — especially in residential
areas — by removing older trucks with higher pollutant emissions with newer
cleaner trucks.
https://www.joc.com/regulation-policy/trump%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98buy-america-rules-halt-ny-nj-truck-replacement-program_20180302.html
In light of the White House’s “buy
American” rhetoric, the “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” host bought a bunch of
merchandise from the Trump Store, which is run by two of the president’s sons,
to see where it all came from.
Most of the merchandise Kimmel purchased was made abroad, and two items didn’t
list a country of origin at all. Kimmel said such an omission could lead to
potential fines of up to $500,000 if it turns out these products were made
overseas.
March 23: Buy American,
Hire American: Putting American Workers First
USCIS is working on a
combination of rulemaking, policy memoranda, and operational changes to
implement the Buy American and Hire American Executive Order. We are creating
and carrying out these initiatives to protect the economic interests of U.S.
workers and prevent fraud and abuse within the immigration system.
https://www.uscis.gov/legal-resources/buy-american-hire-american-putting-american-workers-first
April 30: U.S. President Donald Trump and
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari on Monday sought to trumpet last year’s $600
million
deal for military aircraft previously blocked by the Obama administration
over human rights concerns.
But Trump tripped up at their Rose Garden news conference, following the lead of
a foreign reporter’s question about the turboprop
A-29 Super Tucano light attack aircraft at the heart of the deal, repeatedly
calling them “helicopters.”
